Robotics services at home support

Abstract

This article proposes a robotic system that aims to support the elderly, to comply with the medication regimen to which they are subject. The robot uses its locomotion system to move to the elderly and through computer vision detects the packaging of the medicine and identifies the person who should take it at the correct time. For the accomplishment of the task, an application was developed supported by a database with information about the elderly, the medicines that they have prescribed and the respective timetable of taking. The experimental work was done with the robot NAO, using development tools like MySQL, Python, and OpenCV. The elderly facial identification and the detection of medicine packing are performed through computer vision algorithms that process the images acquired by the robot’s camera. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of object recognition, facial detection, and facial recognition algorithms, using public databases. The tests made it possible to obtain qualitative metrics about the algorithms’ performance. A proof of concept experiment was conducted in a simple scenario that recreates the environment of a dwelling with seniors who are assisted by the robot in the taking of medicines.